Ji-Young Yoo is a fighter and a lover in ‘Freaky Tales’

Tina marks quite a departure from the past roles Yoo has played, most notably in projects like Smoking Tigers and Expats. She recently spoke with JoySauce about those contrasts, how her dance background helped her with the film’s dynamic fight sequences (two words: spike bracelet), the joy of being able to showcase the multiplicity of the Korean diaspora on-screen, and the surprising way director Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station, Black Panther, Creed, Sinners), though not involved in the project, was essential to helping her learn the Oakland dialect.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Zachary Lee: I heard that directors Anna Bowden and Ryan Fleck crafted a playlist for Pedro Pascal to help him get into character.  I wonder if they did that for you, or if that wasn’t the case, since music plays such a big role in Tina’s character, if there were songs you listened to to help yourself get into character?
Ji-young Yoo: To my understanding, Anna and Ryan made playlists for each chapter in the film. Keir Gilchrist, who plays another punk rocker in my chapter, is a part of the punk scene in real life and he provided some music as well. They asked us to watch this wonderful documentary, Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk, directed by Corbet Redford. We spoke with him and met a lot of the Gilman OGs.

Funnily enough, of all the roles that I’ve played, Tina is the character who is most deeply intertwined with music, but I didn’t even listen to the playlist I made for her. As a personal practice, I make playlists for every character. Still, I was so worried about getting the dialect right and I had so little prep time that every morning on the way to set where I would normally listen to the character playlist I've created, I was listening to a dialect sound sample. There was this one specific interview with director Ryan Coogler that I kept on repeat.

ZL: That must have been quite a jump to go from finishing up Smoking Tigers to then being thrown into something like Freaky Tales. In the production notes, Anna and Ryan praised the fact that between takes you were reading a book about the history of punk culture; you can’t be faulted for not doing your research!
JY: There is a little bit of a tone switch there. [Laughs.] It was crazy. I wrapped Smoking Tigers. I did an overnight day as my final day for that film and then flew immediately that midday to the Bay to begin work on Freaky Tales. So on weekends, I was flying up to Oakland to do costume fittings during the production of Smoking Tigers. I had one meeting with the dialect coach for one hour the night before I started work on Freaky Tales so I was doing as much as I could to stay in the world. The book Anna and Ryan are talking about is called Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk and it’s interesting because it doesn't talk too much about what was happening in the East Bay but focuses more on what was going on in New York in that scene with people like Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith. So it was interesting to learn about what was going on there and use that to influence my approach to how Tina would be in the punk scene in East Bay.

ZL: Shoutout to Ryan Coogler for keeping the Oakland accent alive too so you had a sample size to work with.
JY: [Laughs.] I owe him so much. He doesn't know who I am, but there was a phrase he would say in that clip where he talks about getting into filmmaking. The line is something like “What you don’t know, you’re afraid of.” The way he says it is so perfect, and I would say it over and over and over. So I developed a very strong relationship with this one clip of Ryan Coogler. I have to give him a huge shoutout.

ZL: Speaking more to the personality of your character, I’ve always been fascinated by wardrobe choices and the ways it becomes a way to access characters. Looking at your characters in Smoking Tigers and Expats, Tina’s wardrobe definitely stands out. How did the attire become a way to better understand your character?
JY: Tina has such a bold look and from the start, her attire taught me how to stand. I wore these really heavy compound boots and a belt made of actual bullets that weighed quite a lot. I wore a necklace that we bought at a hardware store that’s a real chain, so it was much heavier to wear than a normal necklace.

It was all immediately grounding and wearing that makes you feel confident and bold; you can’t afford not to, just given how heavy all the equipment is. That fits with Tina because she's so unapologetically herself. So when you build a look that's this crazy, with this wig and the piercings and everything else, you have to just give into it and go for it. Hopefully, I came out on the other side looking okay. [Laughs.]

ZL: Tina is certifiably bad*ss. Seeing her move in this space made me wonder about the presence of the Asian American punk scene or if there were people you could specifically draw inspiration from, the way Jay Ellis could talk to Sleepy Floyd in real life.
JY: Yeah, I referenced movements from all over. I looked at some of the Asian punk culture that was happening in Japan and the UK too. If we’re talking about Asian people specifically in the East Bay, Kamala Parks, who’s one of the OG founders of Gilman, was a big inspiration. If you look at that fight scene where the punk rockers are fighting the neo-Nazis, you’ll spot a costume where on the back, there’s an album cover of Kamala and the Karnivores which is her female-led band that she had at the time. She consulted on the film and was the person who booked Green Day on their first tour. She’s incredibly intimidating but also very, very cool. [Laughs.]

ZL: It’s such a short moment, but I loved the scene where Jack Champion’s character, Lucid, meets Tina’s family, specifically Tina’s dad, played by Yong Kim, and Tina’s sister, played by Amy Bui. Can you talk about filming that sequence?
JY: We only shot for maybe half a day but it was so fun. What’s great about that scene, is that it shows how the diaspora—and specifically Korean culture—is so multifaceted. I think we tend to see a lot of immigrant stories in America where the parents are very reserved or stoic, and I think anyone who's spent time with older Korean people knows that that is not true. They are usually—and I say this with love—so loud.

ZL: [Laughs.] Incredibly animated right?
JY: So animated. That’s part of the culture and so I loved that a sequence showing how loud and multidimensional we can be was included. Tina is very loosely based on Ryan’s first girlfriend, who came from an immigrant background but was not Korean, and with this scene, Ryan was trying to get at the fact that Lucid can exist in this community and have this language barrier with Tina’s family, but still feel love and acceptance and community with people that he isn't able to fully communicate with. They’re able to still connect on a human-to-human level.

ZL: You have a good relationship with your parents and family in this film too, at least based on that scene. That’s a departure from your past projects.
JY: My parents had been joking that everyone who watches my work will think I have a terrible relationship with them because of the characters I’m playing. That was not on purpose. I have a very good relationship with my parents; let this be the proof.

ZL: I was talking with Jonathan Eusuebio, the director of Love Hurts, and described how movie fighting is very much like a dance. You come from a dancing background so I’m curious how that informed your approach to the stunt work here, especially since you did the stunts yourself.
JY: My dance background was essential. It’s true; when you're fighting in real life, you want the force to land. You're trying to punch through your opponent, but with film fighting, you're trying to create tension and cause injury that isn't there. It's a lot of cheating angles and pretending. What’s great about having a dance background is that a lot of dancing is about making something look easy or hard without what you’re doing actually being either one of those things. You learn to manipulate space and your body in a different way which is helpful to translate to fighting because you already have a good sense of your range of motion.

It was great to work with Ron Yuan, who was the second unit director and stunt coordinator. We had met through kind of the Asian American community in Los Angeles maybe a year before and hadn't seen each other since, and I had no idea he was working on the movie until I arrived in Oakland to start shooting. I had such a short turnaround and he didn’t get a lot of time to rehearse with me. So on Saturday, in between shooting, we met at the dojo where all the stunt guys were training and we just went through all the different fight choreographies. Once I figured out that I was going to be able to handle it, he kept adding more. What’s fun is that since I did my own stunts, my stunt double, PeiPei Yuan, became a separate character in the film, as a different punk. She’s wonderful; there's a great photo of both of us in awesome wigs.

ZL: Now knowing the short amount of time you had to properly rehearse, it makes your fight scenes all the more striking because you’re not just punching or kicking but also using weapons of all types.
JY: There’s all these DIY weapons. We ran out of time, but Ron, at one point, wanted me to have a chain that I’d whip around at people while riding a bike.

ZL: That would have been metal. Your spike bracelet and wooden chair combo is still cool but—
JY: I’m okay with what we ended up with. The spike bracelet is amazing if it's made out of real arrowheads that they cut off of arrow shafts and put onto the metal bracelet. There were two bracelets I used throughout shooting. One was a bracelet with real metal; it had dulled tips so they weren’t seriously dangerous but I’m such a clumsy person so I was terrified to accidentally poke someone with it. There was also a silicon version that was meant for the stunts so that way if I hit someone, they’re not actually getting hurt. It’s a challenge but it’s also really fun to work with weapons.

Freedom is a very delicate, precious thing and hatred is the ultimate enemy. Fascism and hatred should not be things we’re afraid to disavow.

ZL: I saw the film at its premiere in 2024 and remember thinking “Fighting Nazis has never been more relevant.” Now that Freaky Tales is getting its proper theatrical release, I’m sad to think the same thing. You can’t predict the cultural moment of when your film is released but I’m curious about how the film’s themes—particularly your chapter—have resonated as its pertinence only grows.
JY: Honestly those themes are why I signed onto the movie. I remember reading the script and thinking it was so strange and original. I understood that the core message is that hatred is bad in all of its forms and should be pushed back against. We filmed this in 2022 and it had a different but still resonant significance. Now that it’s coming out in 2025, it’s a great reminder that this conversation is always relevant. Freedom is a very delicate, precious thing and hatred is the ultimate enemy. Fascism and hatred should not be things we’re afraid to disavow.

ZL: Even from a visual level, I loved the contrast drawn between the warm chaos of the Gilman community contrasted with the oppressive orderliness of the Nazi's home base.
JY: It was great to work with the SHARPs, who played the Neo-Nazis in the film. SHARPs stands for Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice. It was wonderful to learn about skinhead culture and its emergence from class consciousness in the UK. I didn’t realize that neo-Nazis had appropriated it and turned it into something different. The leader of the SHARPs is this sweet and kind Buddhist guy. He would just talk about how they called the neo-Nazi skinheads boneheads.

Another connection that was fun to think through was that our chapter title, “Gilman Strikes Back,” is a reference to The Empire Strikes Back, which is also about underdogs standing up against abuse of power. So the layers of pertinence run deep.